Scars & Stitches
by Rydia Highwind
Summary: A year after Meteor is destroyed, Cloud finds that he cannot balance his thoughts completely without dealing with his past. Yaoi.


Author: Rydia Highwind  
Email: chichiri_is_hot@hotmail.com  
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII (post-game)  
Rating: probably eventually R. PG, for this chapter.  
Summary: A year post-game, Cloud must deal with the emotional issues he did not conquer in that crater with Sephiroth. Just as he finds a weak balance, a new weight is thrown into the scale and he must start over again. On top of this, someone seems to be bent on finishing what Sephiroth started, but whether or not they realize this is the question...  
Warning: There WILL be yaoi in this fic. Cloud is gay in this story, and he has had past relationships. If you don't like it, then don't read it. Cloud is also rather psychotic when I write him. As the story is in his point of view, there are times where he drifts into memories or thoughts, and the tense or the person or both will change. These are usually marked with //'s around them.  
Disclaimer: The characters (despite occasional shop owners and the like) and the setting aren't mine, though I wish they were cause I'd be rich then.  
Note: This is a rewrite of a fic once entitled Return To Me, which I now loathe. Yay. /'s usually mark thoughts or random bouts of insanity. Go me.  
  
-----  
  
**Scars & Stitches**  
by Rydia Highwind  
  
Chapter 1  
  
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so I might try to leave it all behind  
I know tomorrow's not so bright now  
I'll say goodbye cause nothing good can last  
you wear and figured no where fast  
today I don't know how to keep it all inside  
but I guess I'll let it slide  
  
- American Hi-Fi "Another Perfect Day"  
  
  
The wind was blowing harder than it normally did, and the clouds in the not so far off east were dark and brooding. Spring storms weren't uncommon, though the weather patterns hadn't completely returned to normal yet after Meteor had come and gone.   
  
So many things had changed, so many things come and gone, and there remained one. The change had affected him too, deeply, deeper than most, he supposed. And yet, he was really no different than when it all began.   
  
/I'm still nothing but a scared little boy, running from the things I don't want to remember... That's why I'm here, after all.../   
  
His thoughts were venomous, tormenting him slowly with a burning reminder of just why he was standing there atop the newly reddened cliff, staring out over the ocean, paying no mind to the strands of golden hair whipping across his face in the slowly dying sun.   
  
Why was it so hard to go back there every night? He knew the answer, even if he didn't want to. He knew he hated to look into that dazzling set of ruby eyes and pretend that he didn't hate himself so much. He knew how much it hurt to lie to her and tell her everything was all right when in truth he was already dead inside.   
  
/I need to get out of here.../   
  
It was a meaningless thought, with nothing behind it. There was nowhere to go, and he didn't trust himself to be able to look into her eyes when he said goodbye anyway. It didn't really matter anyways, even though he'd been through the argument a thousand times. After everything that had happened, she was the only thing he had left. She was the only one who cared.   
  
/I don't even care anymore./   
  
He stared out over the gray skies, noting the slight green tinge of the storm clouds. The Lifestream flux that had destroyed Meteor a year ago had not completely dissipated and was even still slightly visible when the sun was not out. The remains of Meteor had had a far greater impact on his view, though. The Lifestream had not vanquished Meteor from existence, of course, and its dusty remains had turned much of the landscape within a five mile radius of Midgar into the fiery red hue the rock had originally held.   
  
The dust was what had made the rescue missions to Midgar such a resounding failure. Dust and sand storms were increasingly common, and made rescue efforts mostly in vain. A miniscule three hundred some people were safely freed from two sectors before the rescue operation realized it was in vain. The operation continued, but a living person had not been found in months.   
  
Change. The city of Midgar had once been a massive, thriving capital and now it was reduced to nothing but a giant mass of steel and sandstorms.   
  
Change. A frightened little boy acting out his own charade of being worthwhile and deserving of the things he'd always wanted, structuring his lies so carefully that even he was surprised when they fell apart; now a frightened little boy wistfully wondering what was left.   
  
It was almost more soothing to live within the charade, inside the lies, and he would have longed for it if he didn't fear being more disrespectful than he already had been. He had been taught to respect the dead, whether or not they had deserved such in life, though there was no question of what was or was not deserved in this case. Not to him.   
  
He wondered idly what would happen if he just never returned to the little inn Tifa had erected in Kalm, to the little apartment in the upstairs of the house she had bought after the war had ended that she insisted he stay in. He wondered how long it would be before she forgot about him and moved on.   
  
/I'm not so selfish as to believe it won't come...the day when even Tifa doesn't care../   
  
No one could care forever, not about him. He had never asked anyone to. He had never wanted anyone to. It was better to be alone, it always had been. The closer he got to people, the weaker he became. The more he loved someone, the farther away they slipped until there was nothing left but a burning ache in the back of his mind, taking the shape of the more tender memories he carried.   
  
There was a list of names somewhere in Junon, a list of the names of those who died in the world crisis. A list referred to by the less compassionate as casualties of the war. He had once gone personally to ensure that the name 'Aeris Gainsborough' was on that list. He wondered if he should have put down his own name as well.   
  
/But I was dead before the war started. I died the day he left.../   
  
The thought came unbidden, and though he had vowed not to think of that day, the memories came washing back around him like a flood. A drop of rain hit his face, and he was on his knees, not certain how he got there or how long he'd been there.   
  
//It's cold. Everything is cold. There is pain, there is biting pain, but even that pales in the cold of the lightless world. It's cold, and it's hard, and it's elusive. He wants to scream but there is no throat, he doesn't have a throat to scream with. He is a pair of hands, arms, ten fingernails digging into the world of ice consuming all. It's not real, this isn't the world he's seen in his dreams. He dreams all the time, he dreams and there is life and it is still and green and it is not so elusive such as this reality. He can only tell it is reality in the fact that it's not, for since they came here, his dreams have been real and his wakefulness has been but a nightmare.//   
  
"Stop it," he said out loud, half-stunned at the sound of his own voice, and more so at the fact that his hands were now covering his ears as though this would keep the thoughts from his mind. He was kneeling in the now pouring rain, staring at the trickle of water underneath him as the rain gathered and ran down the slope he was perched on.   
  
He wasn't crying. He couldn't cry. He had not cried since that day so long ago, when the night had used up all his tears. The rain was his tears, the sky was crying for him so he didn't have to. He turned his face upwards into the gray heavens, staring blankly up as though there was something there within the rain that could answer those questions he didn't even know how to ask.   
  
/It wouldn't make any difference... I shatter everything I touch.../   
  
He lived in a world of glass. Everything handed to him was fragile, everything he had worked so hard for was like crystalline ice tucked between his fingers. It seemed that no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he cared, everything would shatter when given to him. His hands and his heart were covered in the scars of the fragments of the ones he had cared for. He was destructive. He only broke anything he touched.   
  
He couldn't keep them safe. No matter how hard he tried, he failed. A failure. In anything, everything, a failure. He did not deserve to be exposed to such beautiful things. The more he wanted to protect someone, the farther away they slipped, only to die, to shatter in front of him, as though to say, "See this? This is your fault."   
  
His hands were stained with the blood of too many already. He couldn't go back.   
  
( ...lying in the street, fire raging all around him, he was on his chest, he'd been running.. running to his house.. /save her... save mom... / ..but he didn't make it, and he could hear her screaming inside as the building burned around her, in her... )   
  
( ...watching her fall, the blade piercing through her chest.. the sharp stab of pain in his own chest when she stopped smiling.. this was all too familiar, too real, too much.. his eyes burned but he couldn't cry, his throat tightened but he couldn't scream.. she looked so peaceful and the blade was bright red with her blood... )   
  
( ...the rain on his hands was warm and sticky and red.. empty, it was all so.. there was screaming, someone was screaming and they wouldn't stop.. /my voice.. I'm screaming.. / ..can't go on can't can't can't how could you no don't go don't please no-- )   
  
He couldn't feel it as he dug his fingernails into his palm in an attempt to stop these feelings. He couldn't feel it, he could only see it, the blood welling up in the small crescent shaped cuts in the palms of his hands and then washing away just as quickly as the raindrops splattered on his hands.   
  
/..am I so far gone? That physical pain doesn't even hurt? I know it must hurt but I can't _feel_ it.../   
  
He should get back to town soon. Tifa was probably staring out the window after pausing from a worried pace around the bar, wondering where he was. He didn't want her to worry. He didn't like to see her sad. He didn't like to make her sad.   
  
He was all right. He always was.   
  
---   
  
//He shouldn't be so afraid of things, he thinks, but there seemed to be so many things he avoids because he doesn't like the feeling he gets in the pit of his stomach when he comes near them. He doesn't quite know if it is fear because he can't really remember what exactly fear is. He just knows he does not like the feeling and so he avoids things he knows cause it.   
  
Some of the things he doesn't like make sense, like sleep. He dreams of burning, and he can smell the pungent stink of charred flesh wrenching his stomach and making him want to vomit. He dreams of hands reaching out of the fire, reaching out to touch his face; burning hands, his mother's hands, blackened with fire and red with blood. Her blood? No... his blood. And there is blood on his face, and he too burns.   
  
He dreams of steel, piercing flesh and bringing death and blood and pain. He dreams of long, silver swords, cutting down people he loves, people he hates, people he has never met. Sometimes the sword chases him down and sometimes he is wielding the sword. Sometimes he is just standing there watching and sometimes he isn't even there, he just knows.   
  
And so, it makes sense that he doesn't like to sleep.   
  
But it doesn't make sense that he doesn't like to look people in the eye. He never really has, he doesn't think, and he really doesn't know why. Perhaps it is because his drill sergeants were so damn obsessed with looking you straight in the eye, or maybe it is because he knows his eyes glow when they shouldn't. Or maybe he just doesn't like to see the pity or the concern so often hiding just under the surface. He doesn't like being felt sorry for, and he doesn't think he deserves anyone's concern. Or perhaps it is because his mother used to tell him that the eyes were the windows to the soul and he doesn't think he has a soul anymore.   
  
He thinks maybe that there are too many memories he associates with eyes. Memories he doesn't like to think about because it's easier not to.   
  
He is also afraid of forgetting, but he is more afraid of remembering. For a long while, he lived in the memories, he _was_ a memory because the world had never been so beautiful as has it had been in the past. Now he doesn't think he can admit that those days ever happened. If he were to lose himself in them again, well, he knows now it had been only weakness to do so. He's afraid to forget them, but he's more afraid to remember.   
  
Or maybe he just doesn't like to. He can't tell anymore.   
  
And so he doesn't look people in the eye, and he lies awake at night until he is too exhausted to dream, and he avoids thinking about things that make him remember. Because if he never remembers them, he really can't forget them anyway.//   
  
---   
  
The door had to be slammed because it was swollen from the rain water, but the sound it made was muffled anyway, compared to the downpour clattering against the roof. The aura of the bar was subdued when he walked in, and no one bothered looking up at him, much too busy with their drinks to worry about some soaked stranger in the doorway.   
  
He could hear Tifa but could not see her. She was in one of the back rooms, talking to someone, her normally quiet alto raised a few notes in either apprehension or excitement; he couldn't tell which. The sound of her voice wasn't extremely loud but he recognized her voice over the din of quiet talk and made his way to the bar.   
  
A pair of crimson eyes peeked out around the corner, proving that she had only been a few steps into the back room, and said eyes widened slightly as she observed the state he was in--dripping wet and making no move to take care of this. "Cloud!" she gasped, frowning disapprovingly. She turned back, said a few words that sounded a lot like "no, seriously, stay _there_," and then slipped out from behind the door.   
  
"Who were you talking to?" he asked almost disinterestedly. He did care, of course, and he certainly remembered her soprano voice being just a bit too high when he first heard her walking through the door and up to the bar. But he couldn't force himself to sound as though he cared. Perhaps it was better to calm her down, let her know he was all right, as all right as he ever got.   
  
She did not look at him, and he knew there was something terribly not right. She always looked at him when she spoke, her ruby gaze intimidating to him in a way, forcing him to instinctively avoid looking her in the eye. So it was a rather disturbing role-reversal as he found himself studying her downcast eyes, looking at anything _but_ him, and wondered if that was how he looked to her so much of their time spent together.   
  
"It's...no one important," she said, and he knew it was. He didn't know who it could be or why she was hiding this person's presence from him, but it would probably be better not to push her about it. While leaving her to her own devices had proved to be...well, not such a great idea last time around, it hardly seemed like it could be anything could be nearly of the caliber as what she had hidden before. "Come on, why don't we get you cleaned up? We can talk about this...Cloud? Oh..."   
  
Her voice trailed off as she looked up at him and realized that he was no longer looking at her but rather the entrance to the room she had just exited, and she knew what he was looking at.   
  
"You all right?"   
  
//"....can you hear me?"//   
  
That voice....   
  
He was running away.   
  
---  
  
//He thinks he knows what fire feels like, but he doesn't really remember touching it the same way this time around. He thinks he _must_ know what fire feels like because he dreams about it when he has the opportunity to think too much before he falls asleep. What he dreams is real, only in a different reality, a reality removed five years, and he wishes he knew why it was five years, but he doesn't.   
  
But the dreams aren't really real, not like the memories, because he is separated from his body and simply watching from a distractingly odd view point in the dreams. The memories aren't like the dreams, even though they are the same. The dreams are deep, so deep that he can't grasp everything and something is always not right. He can't see his own face and he can't hear his own voice in the dreams, so he fills in the blanks himself and tries not to wonder why it doesn't quite fit.   
  
The memories are empty. They are simply stories that should have emotion behind them, but he can't remember how he felt when he'd chased the specter through the distractingly dark night, or what went through his mind when he'd seen the sparks of sound and light and blood when the doors had finally been opened. It shouldn't be that way, he knows, and he doesn't know what to think of it so he rubs his head and tries not to think, as though that will explain everything that doesn't fit. He feels as though everything has been torn apart like a jigsaw puzzle in his mind and he doesn't know how to start putting it back together or even where all the pieces are.   
  
But then, it doesn't seem important to find them all, not just yet. He thinks maybe he has spent the last five years looking for pieces and what he has now is from all that. He doesn't think there are many left to find, but he doesn't remember.   
  
It's more the fact that he can't remember that bothers him than it is what he can't remember. If it were really important, he could ask Tifa. He hasn't because he knows it's not an easy topic to approach, and she seems inordinately avoidant when he speaks of it.   
  
He thinks he knows what fire feels like, and it's not like this. The fire in his dreams is pain and blood and screaming for someone who cannot hear him, screaming _why why why oh god why how could you do this why oh why did you_--and then it stops because there is something tingling in his mouth. The fire in his dreams is betrayal and hatred and anger and he remembers why but it doesn't make any sense.   
  
The fire here is friendly, it is tame and it listens to him. It seems wrong somehow that they are using the fire for their own purposes. But then, the fire here is different. He still sees Tifa wince when they leave with the box in a bag slung over Jessie's shoulder, and he himself still shies away from the heat of the blaze when it's over with. He doesn't like the fire materia that Barret tried to give him, even though the fire is in his control, or that's what they tell him. He thinks he knows what a Fire 3 spell is like because he smells the burning flesh in the dreams (but not in the memories).   
  
This time is different because Tifa is coming along. He finds that he doesn't argue the point because it doesn't seem to matter. He knows the Shinra have to be waiting for them, waiting for their next move and probably even knowing when it was coming, and he thinks maybe he believes she can't die anymore because heaven knew she _should_ be dead. And so should he.   
  
But that was five years ago. And he still doesn't know where he's been since that time.   
  
And there is fire again, and it is not friendly. It's not like the fire from before, but it is still hurtful, out of their grasp because, just like he'd thought, the Shinra are there and they had been waiting and now he is falling, falling, falling.   
  
There is someone speaking to him, a voice so familiar that he is comforted more by the sound than the actual words the voice seems to be saying. He is tired now, and it doesn't really bother him that he can't place where he has heard that voice before. It doesn't really matter that he seems to be floating in some sort of oblivion, a strange sort of liquid that hinders his movements.   
  
"You all right? ....can you hear me?"//   
  
---   
  
At least, he decided as his feet carried him somewhere, but hell if he knew where.. at least he knew now whose voice it was.   
  
And then he was outside, in the rain again.   
  
-----  
  
_End of Chapter 1_  
  
-----  
  
HOLY CRAP THAT TOOK FOREVER TO WRITE.  
  
Um.. story notes. Yeah.  
  
"Scars & Stitches" is the name of a song by the band Guster and I think it fits where I'm _hoping_ this fic will go.. (You never know with Cloud. He tends to do things without asking.) It's a good song and all should listen to it.  
  
I can't think of anything else to say. If you know me at ALL, you know who the person it. XD Even if you haven't read the old (aka craptastic) version of this.  
  
Please review or email me with questions! That's what this little end thing is here for! My email is:  
  
chichiri_is_hot@hotmail.com  
  
I love email! Don't hesitate to let me know what you think, or ask questions or whatever. 


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